THIS IS AN IDEA I HAD AS A WAY TO WIN A FIGHT ON THE INTERNET.
YOU WOULD HAVE A PICTURE.
IT WOULD BE OF A BABY CRYING, AND IT WOULD HAVE A BLANK WHITE WORD BALLOON.
AND THEN YOU WOULD TAKE YOUR OPPONENT’S POST.
AND YOU WOULD PHOTOSHOP IT INTO THE BABY’S WORD BALLOON.
AND NOW YOU HAVE WON THE FIGHT.

In Seattle, there is a game most of us play. Someone will mention being from Spokane, or having visited Spokane, or going to school in Spokane, and a good 25% of the time, the reply will be the same.

See, Spokane is “The Home of the Inland Empire”. They often think of themselves as REAL Washington. The fact that most of the people are out here on the coast, and that when people think of the state they think Seattle, or maybe Olympia doesn’t deter them. This enclave of poor, right-wing, fudementalists is certain that they are the authentic North-Westerners.

The roads are falling apart, and while everyone is upset, no one cares enough to pay for it. They complain about their tax dollars being wasted “by those communists over the mountains”, but the reality is that over the last ten years, for every dollar they’ve paid into the state, they’ve gotten around a dollar and ten cents back. We are supporting them.

So when someone hears you have been or plan to be in Spokane, they often say the same thing.

I spent hours last night working on the site, having it break for no reason, giving up on my shitty host, and moving the whole thing to a new host. As such, I do not have the energy for a real post. In its place is a picture of the Prophet Mohammed.

Berry Lucky Charms is nothing special in and of itself. It tastes kind of like Trix, or Berry Berry Kix, but with Lucky Charm marshmellows mixed in. It lacks the interplay between the hearty frosted oat and the sweet marshmellows found in traditional Lucky Charms, and instead just tastes like too much sugar. The only thing remarkable about it is how well it serves as an example for the intense importance placed on brands in certain high-loyalty food markets. Foods like Cereal, Soda and Candy have such intense customer loyalty that the marketers are finding it almost impossible to release new products without tying them to an existing brand.

Examples are everywhere. In candy and soda it usually shows up as a limited edition, like white chocolate Kit Kats, or Sprite Remix. With cereal you see it mostly as a different flavor in an established form. For example, Berry Lucky Charms and Chocolate Lucky Charms.

It’s a strange phenomenon that people are only comfortable buying something new when it appears to be something old.

The troubling aspect of this is that there has to be some degree of sameness in any new product, so the buyer will assosciate this new product with the product they already enjoy. Innovation and variety are replaced by imitation and variation. General Mills, in an attempt to consolidate their hold on the Chocolate Cereal with Marshmellows market have decided to de-emphasize the beloved Count Chocula in favor of Chocolate Lucky Charms. This is a mistake for two reasons. First, Chocolate Lucky Charms are simply not as good as Count Chocula. Chocula has chocolate marshmellows, which is awesome. Chocolate Lucky Charms just uses the same marshmellows as ever. This smacks of lazyness and condescension. More importantly, they have traded a Chocolate Vampire for an Irish Dwarf. In any context, this is a poor choice.

In conclusion, here is a picture of Lucky grabbing Ashley Peldon’s breast.

One could argue that I missed posting yesterday, but I will simply point out that actually, the post from wednesday was actually written and posted on thursday. So everything is fine. If someone were to point out that this means I didn’t post on wednesday, I would mumble a rambling defense based primarily around the phrase “the Ides of March.”

So, I’m going to use this post, which has already become deeply irrelevant because of the incredibly uninteresting first paragraph, to give all of you some very useful information.

The KillAllTheWhiteMan Guide to Leaving a Message

With a Business:

Say your name.

Say your phone number. Slowly.

Give a VERY brief message. You’re going to wind up going over everything again when they call back, so keep it short. If you’re over 10 seconds, you’re wasting everyone’s time.

Hang up.

For a friend:

Do whatever you want.

This is basically an invitation for performance art.

The answering machine is a stage.

Sometimes I sing songs.

Or act out short radio dramas.

Or call whomever I’m leaving a message for “Grandma”.

Once I left a ten minute long message that was me demanding the listener hang up because nothing was going to happen.

Today’s post was actually written on the 16th, but I edited the time stamp. I did this because I am disgusting and powerful and must be stopped. This is the face of a total lack of editorial oversight. WHICH BRINGS ME TO:

Videogame Journalism. It isn’t actually journalism. Journalism is the collecting, writing, editing and presentation of news. Your feelings about a game are criticism, not journalism. Speculating wildly based on comments Miyamoto makes in an interview is editorialism, not journalism. Retyping a press release is about as close to journalism as they usually get, and that’s the kind of thing a real news outlet would pass off to an intern.

My wife Tara works front desk at a low income housing complex, essentially an apartment building. There’s this guy who’s lived there about two months, and every week he says something along the lines of “We’re so lucky here! We have one of the most beautiful women in Seattle sitting right in our lobby!” and she’s running out of polite ways to respond.

I said the best way to respond would be to hit him in the face with a pie.

I’ve decided that I miss doing the Daily Words. Effective immediately until I stop, I’m going to do posts on weekdays.

First Post:

I believe that it is possible to be famous, and still be depressed. I am willing to accept that even though your emo band is on a world tour, you still feel like a hard luck case. It doesn’t make you disengenuous that you can’t cheer up, or change your self-image. It does make you an asshole.